Dynamic changes in legislation, patent expiry of block buster drugs, and increasing healthcare costs call for significant changes in the global pharmaceutical industry. These changes are driving pharma companies to explore pharmerging markets for personalized medicines, biopharmaceuticals and biosimilars, which are opening up opportunities for further growth. The pharmerging markets offer tremendous opportunities for pharmaceutical manufacturers facing mounting pressures in developed markets.

IMS defines pharmerging countries as those having more than $1 billion in spending growth from 2012 to 2016 and a per capita gross domestic product of less than $25,000. A few of the 17 pharmerging countries include China, Brazil, Russia, India, Latin America and others.

Global pharmaceutical sales are expected to grow about 3% annually from $955 billion in 2011 to nearly $1.2 trillion in 2016, with 17 pharmerging countries. These countries are estimated to represent 30% of the total sales in 2016, up from 20% of the total in 2011. The BRIC nations will account for $248 billion in pharmaceutical sales by 2016. It is anticipated that as economies grow and mature, they begin to spend more on health related issues.

Global pharma majors have been witnessing sluggish growth in developed markets and as part of their strategic vision they have made significant organic and inorganic investments into emerging markets in recent years.

In the recent decade there have been focused investments on China, Brazil, Russia and India, which has started yielding results. Some of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies have already started realizing more than 25% of their growth from pharmerging markets. All of the top 15 global pharmaceutical companies are accelerating efforts to strengthen their presence within them – either through R&D investments, licensing deals, co-marketing, and mergers and acquisitions.

One clear, outcome is that Pharma companies are very keen to make inroads into pharmerging markets. They also understand that a well-planned strategy with a good understanding of new regulatory norms is absolutely essential for long term success.

With dynamic changes in the regulatory norms being set by individual nations, data management and regulatory submission is becoming increasingly complex and would be a major challenge to pharmaceutical companies going forward. To overcome these challenges and avoid rejection from regulatory agencies, Pharma companies are today exploring options for a unified data management and submission platform /tool especially for managing data for pharmerging markets.